If you want to acknowledge Samus Aran of the Metroid series as the original and most badass female heroine in video games, RESPECT DAT ARMOR, not dat ass.

Zero Suit Samus is the worst idea Nintendo has ever had for a character “re”design, and such a blatant excuse to pander to hetero mouth-breathing stoner geeks who need to beat off to anything with a face. Don’t even get me started on what they did to our beloved hero in Metroid: Other M. Yick.

When you take away Samus’s opaque visor, her stoic silence, and her incredible shape-shifting ancient armor, you are taking away the point of all of it to begin with (besides the need to kick ass in hostile environments and being the last princess heir to a millennial-old race of bird people or something): gender anonymity. It sends a clear statement that “anyone can brave the depths of a ferocious alien planet and BAM! (takes her helmet off when you complete the game)…ESPECIALLY A WOMAN.”

Even Metroid Prime only references Samus's gender when she is at her most brutal: the reflection of her plainly female face in her visor when you blast something with a fully charged beam.

Every lady has a butt and breasts, but only Samus Aran has a perpetually life-saving, impossibly shape-shifting, unfathomably complex Chozo-enhanced Power Suit. So let's celebrate the latter, shall we?

Note: I am aware that the 8-bit renderings of Samus in a leotard at the end of the original Metroid can also be seen as hetero male chauvinism, but I chalk this decision more up to an inability to visually represent someone as a woman in the 8-bit era as opposed to revealing her half-nakedness in the name of showing off "eye candy" (considering the scarcity of detail and realism).